Can following the news on data privacy issues affect an individual’s concern about their own privacy? This report seeks to find what is behind someone’s concern about data privacy.
Figure 1: Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya
Does an individual’s level of education and knowledge on how their data is being used and shared digitally influence their attitude towards data sharing? In this study, I intend on analyzing whether individuals who are more familiar with the framework of data privacy tend to be more or less granular in their relationship with data sharing, that is, whether they are more or less cautious when choosing to share their information with companies, the government, and other institutions. I expect that individuals who have more knowledge on issues of data privacy will be more protective of their data and more careful in how they engage with technology, while individuals with less familiarity with the notions of data privacy will tend to be less attentive and more permissive with their data-sharing choices. I believe this hypothesis might be true since individuals with more knowledge on data privacy will most likely be more aware of the potential dangers that surround sharing personal information with companies and services, therefore looking to prevent these dangers from happening to them. On the other hand, individuals who are not aware of the perils of data sharing might not be afraid of engaging with technology more freely, given that they might not fully comprehend the risks involved with sharing their data.
The data used in this study is taken from the June 2019 survey “American Trends Panel Wave 49”, carried out by the company Ipsos and sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Respondents were US adults randomly selected from phone number random-digit-dial surveys, answering a series of multiple-choice questions on issues related to technology, social media, surveillance and data privacy. The survey had a total of 4272 participants; this is an overview of the dataset: